The Kirkus Prize is one of the richest literary awards in the world, with a prize of $50,000 bestowed annually to authors of fiction, nonfiction and young readers’ literature. It was created to celebrate the 81 years of discerning, thoughtful criticism Kirkus Reviews has contributed to both the publishing industry and readers at large. Books that earned the Kirkus Star with publication dates between November 1, 2015, and October 31, 2016 (see FAQ for exceptions), are automatically nominated for the 2016 Kirkus Prize, and the winners will be selected on November 3, 2016, by an esteemed panel composed of nationally respected writers and highly regarded booksellers, librarians and Kirkus critics.

KIRKUS REVIEW

A smurfstonishingly bad tie-in to the recently released film.

A stingy assortment of entirely unanimated movie stills that generally depict just a part (and typically not even the most dramatic part) of the action is paired with captions that appear piecemeal. The tale sends a group of Smurfs from their village to New York City, pursued by the evil sorcerer Gargamel, who is after the Smurf essence “that he needs to become all-mighty [sic].” The hyper-compressed text runs to lines like “Clumsy is down that his clumsiness is the reason the other Smurfs are in this mess. Grace reassures him that he can be anything he wants to be, and no one is just one thing.” The text is never entirely visible at once and gets partly or completely skipped over if the picture is swiped prematurely. Children have the option of hearing an emotive narration, struggling on their own to make sense of the sketchy story line—or bagging the entire adventure to play a perfunctory “Spot the Differences” game with three altered pairs of stills.

Make room at the bottom of the barrel for this smurforrendous (non)effort. (iPad storybook app. 6-8)

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